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Internet Phones Replacing POTS In Japan
prostoalex writes: "CNN reports on growth of Internet phone services in Japan. The high cost of telephone calls, which many saw as an impediment to spread of the Internet is right now actually a menace to plain old phone companies, as more and more people are switching to VoIP services."
I remember an old Robert Cringely column in which he said that a new technology will replace an old one (or win, or something like that), if it is either ten times better, or one-tenth as expensive. And sure enough, this article explains that the cost of a three-minute long distance call went down to 6 cents (I assume they converted from yen) from 68 cents. I'm not saying Cringely is always right, but this theory of his seems to apply in this situation.
If people are changing from my service to one that is more flexible and cheaper, then I am inevitably screwed.
These people need to take a lesson in business! As far as I see it, if a new technology is making my current service/product obsolete, then I need to study this new technology so that I can offer it myself. If thats not an option, well then you buy stock in whatever company is succeeding you! ;)
Seriously though... I do have a question about the "ownership" of the actual lines used to transmit the VoIP- The article states that it will be using existing wires, and users will have to pay a 'line fee' to the company that owns the physical wires. So does that give the owner any control over how it is used?
-ADR
There's one reason why I've always wanted VoIP: traceroute.
At my old home, I had a dialup connection to my ISP. About once or twice a month when I would dial in for the evening, I would hear *static* on the phoneline. I'm talking like a noisy AM radio type of static. I would hang up the modem, dial in again, and the static would be gone.
My best guess is that there was a faulty wire *somewhere* in the telco's network that was causing the static, and I was unfortunate enough for my call to end up on that wire. (Remember, POTS is a circuit switched network, the same set of wires is used for the duration of the connection) Of course, when I called Verizon, there was absolutely no way for me to reproduce the problem reliably, so they couldn't do much to help. Had I some equivilent of a way to do a traceroute, I could simply say, 'the link between switch-5.verizon.net and switch-32.verizon.net is dropping packets, please put that in the trouble ticket so the techs can fix it'.
So yeah, I'm a little giddy about VoIP. Almost makes me wanna get a T1 to my current residence and drop the POTS line I have now... Well, I can dream, I suppose.
I'll stop babbling now...
I recently helped set up a cybercafe in Akure, Nigeria. Nigeria's telecommunications infrastructure has been in a dismal state for a long time, and it seems people are eating up new technology as fast as they can whenever it's available. People want to communicate ... and wherever there's an alternative to the POTS, they'll rush for it.
... one could easily make a significant profit by offering international phone service to the US over VoIP, charging approximately 40 cents/minute. Net2Phone, the leading carrier here, charges only 10 cents per minute. I once saw someone walk into the cybercafe wanting to place a call to Lagos (in the same Nigeria), even though it would cost him 200 Naira per minute (about $1.45!).
For example, it was only recently (about a year ago) that cellphones were introduced to the market. Despite the fact that government regulatory bodies have made it unnecessarily difficult for companies to enter this market, there are already 3 operators, and within a year that industry has injected well over $1 billion into the economy. People don't bother getting land phones now...if there's cellular/GSM available they'll use it.
Cybercafes are starting up at an almost alarming rate in cities all over Nigeria. One of the big markets that these cybercafes cater for is VoIP
At the rate at which this market is booming, I can imagine what would happen when broadband access becomes widely available for cheap prices. VoIP could all but replace the POTS as the standard means for international telephony, with mobile phones for local/long distance calls. By the time there is a solid national communications network in place with enough bandwidth, VoIP could even become the dominant means for local and long distance phone service, especially since it's already gaining serious popularity. The POTS could easily become totally irrelevant!
As far as I know, the situation in most African countries is similar to that of Nigeria, although many of them may not have the level of development in the comms industry that we do. But I believe that this continent probably has the largest potential market for VoIP (and mobile phones) right now.
Am I a hipster-doofus?